The Super Summer Slam Blog

Wham--Bam Summer Super Slam! As some of you know, I may have been a little delinquent on my summer blog postings. Now for your reading pleasure (or just cat picture pleasure) I have compiled a few weeks of our life and activities into one monstrosity of an internet posting. So sit back, relax, put on some good tunes and laugh at us not going to Berlin.

Actually, for tunes, put this on. The new Scissor Sisters is our album of the summer.

Or this.

For the first time ever I experienced a night out very close to my residence. The abandoned cotton mill across the street from our flat was taken over by a theater group and a production of Dickens' Hard Times. We thought it was a little weird at first that people were walking around an abandoned mill at night, but soon found out it was a play. We rounded up the troops and managed to scoop some tickets to the mostly sold out performance. Felicia and Carolyn joined us for some cheese and wine at ours beforehand, and we proceeded to leave our flat, take the elevator down and walk across the street to hand in our tickets. I loved it!!! I wish it wasn`t a one-off play and there was a regular rotation. Oh well. Anna joined us later and we enjoyed the shot. It was a promenade production, which meant there were a number of sets in a long room and the actors moved between the sets for separate scenes. I really enjoyed it, although some of the scenes could have been cut, because by the time we moved down the procession the dialogue was almost over.
I snuck some pics.

Here is the set.

Here are Heather and Felicia acting.

Here are real actors.

It was good play too, but the coolest bit was watching it in the old mill itself. The play had a fictional town/mill in it, but it`s not inconceivable that the working/living conditions would have been very similar in Manchester. Hard Times=Good Times.

I have been playing a lot of softball this summer and am really enjoying it. I`ve made some good friends on my ball team, but one of the disappointments is that Heather couldn`t play with us because she is busy with work on Wednesday nights. That is why we were really excited for a charity softball tournament that we could play together. It`s a really cool thing. There was a player in the Manchester league who passed away from cancer at a young age, and now they have a charity tournament in her name and donate about 2-3 thousand pounds to the cancer hospital every year. There was a lot of laughing and high-fives all around. Drinking too. Each team was given a color and we had to theme ourselves. H and I were on the Blue Marlins. We didn`t win, but it was close. Well, not really close, but we weren`t last place. I made another shirt with a giant blue bejewelled Marlin on it, including the adipose fins!

I didn`t take any pics of us, but here is the competition.

The next day was the five year anniversary of my softball club: Club Thunder. It`s a true club structure that has about 80-90 people in it over five teams. A solid group of peeps. We had a exhibition game of two teams: Manchester vs. The Rest of the World. Afterwards the team had a big bbq.

Here is my club.

That week we went out to visit our friends in a country community called Broadbottom. That`s right, Broadbottom. Great name. Carolyn had organized a surprise birthday picnic for Anna`s 30th. Broadbottom is about an 30 minute ride from Piccadilly. It`s not a very large town, but it has a big park that is spread throughout the grounds of an old mill (are you getting a pattern of historic life here...)

The stone ring is the foundation of a natural gas and water storage tank---now it is a bbq stand.

One of the strange things I find about the English countryside is the amount of vines and ivy on the trees. They are consistently covered. It makes it feel like a real jungle--A jungle surrounded by houses, but a jungle nonetheless.

 

It was really fun and Anna was definitely surprised.

One of the greatest things this year has been meeting friends from home, abroad. It`s really fun. We are still trying to meet Jeff and Helene, who we met in Paris, for an afternoon movie matinee in Moscow. Might not happen. Anyway, we were thrilled to head to London for a few days at the end of June to hook up with Kim Duff. She is a veteran of all things UK and has been praised on this blog in the past.

Now that I have been there twice, I can say that Soho is my favorite area of London.

Summer hotel prices in London are expensive. Really expensive. Like you need to pay with an ounce of gold expensive. Like maybe two ounces. Unreal. To combat the huge prices we decided to stay in a hostel, which is no biggie--unless it is the worst hostel in the entire world!! If any of you go to London, do not stay at Clink 72!

We made it to the British Museum this time. I`ve wanted to go the bastion of colonialism for a long, long time. The building itself was really cool--staunch classical design on the outside, but a modern glass roof rotunda in the inside. It was strange seeing Haida totem poles there.

The Egyptian section was unreal. They must have had about 15 different mummies on display. It was hard to take pics through the glass, but here is the best. The mummies were neat, but the sarcophagus were ornate and gorgeous.

If you are going to travel to the afterlife and need your special things with you, why not have your cat mummified too!

Or your Mummy Kitten!

I think I could have spent a whole day just wandering around.

The Japanese room.

The South Asia Room

The Persian Room

and oh yeah, the FREAKIN ROSETTA STONE

We met up with Kim D. and took a little cruise up and down the River Thames. It was about 29 degrees too. Really hot, man.

Tower Bridge

Millennium Bridge

The Eye

Houses of Parliament, St. Stephens, and the Eye

To beat the heat....Pimms cocktails. MMMMMMMM.

We headed out for dinner in Camden to meet up with our other friend, Sam. So many friends from Vancouver! We went to an organic gastropub and it was delicious, with nice wine.

This is the Angel tube station. I think it really was the one from American Werewolf in London. The escalators down were the longest we had been on.

We ended up staying with Kim that night and skipped another night in our hellish hostel. We got up at the crack of dawn and headed out to the All England Lawn and Tennis Club to catch some of the famous Wimbledon action. Most of the tickets are sold by lottery in the winter time, but they hold about 6000 tickets for the `commoners` every day. About 1000 for access to the top two courts and 5000 general admission to the other 18 courts. It has a long established waiting system and even has it`s own name of ``The Queue``. I did quite a bit of research of when to show up to guarantee that we would get tickets. We ended up being about 15 minutes behind when we wanted to show up (breaky!). We took the train then a special shuttle bus and arrived and found The Queue.

This is no exaggeration....it went on for about 800m and then turned into a snaking line in a gigantic field. We were given a ``Guide to Queueing`` and official non-transferable Queue Cards. The numbers on the Queue Cards......8853 and 8854. This was at 8:15 in the morning, and play didn`t start until 12:00 and it was 31 degrees out. Dang.

I thought some of the lines were long when I worked Customs at the airport. I thought there was a long line in Amsterdam a few years ago when the whole KLM system crashed. It was nothing compared to this. Needless to say, we didn`t wait it out. Rather, we went back to Kim`s and googled the best place to watch Wimbledon not at Wimbledon. We ended up in a square central London, sitting in beach chairs, and watching a big screen of the action, while being served by the restaurant beside us. The queue was the longest of the tournament because of the nice weather and Andy Murray, the great UK hope was playing (They say he is English when he wins and Scottish when he loses--I thought that was mean.)

This is as close as we got to the action.

That night we went out and had some drinks in Fitzrovia with Kim`s friend. It was the first patio summer night that we have had in the UK. It was very relaxing.

The day after was the Tate Modern. Again, super cool building. It`s right on the Thames in the old power generation station. It`s gigantic.

I really liked this installation.

The gallery had some cool pieces. I am not always the biggest fan, but there was a Pollock that I though was really fantastic. It was the most under control chaos I`ve ever really seen. There was also a special exhibition of Diane Arbus photos which was stellar.

We headed up to the top floor cafe for a little caffeine break. It was at the same time as a monster rain storm started up. The people on the Millennium Bridge were running for their lives. That`s St. Paul`s Cathedral in the background.

We chilled for a while until it subsided.

We finished up our day with some shopping on Carnaby Street, a pint, and some crisps. Good times Duffer!

The next weekend, Heather went up to Glasgow for a conference. I sat at home all weekend by myself drinking vodka out of a crystal skull. Ahhhh not true, but I did bring some friends over and we drank vodka from a crystal skull. After a day of recovery, I jumped on the double decker and headed out to my old haunt, Chorlton, for the Beech Road festival.  It`s a nice street in the middle of town, and for some reason it has its own festival. They shut the whole road down and there were loads of interesting people about.

Here is some guy and pretty much the worst outfit I could imagine someone wearing in public.

Her is a little kid (who seems a little old) dressed in an offensive and quite ugly Indian costume.

Here is Andy G. and Katy. They are both actors in Manchester. Andy G. is from my ball team and is an actual celebrity, not like my DJ friend. You may have seen him in episodes of: League of Gentlemen, Holby City, and yes, he was Ganja Tim on Coronation Street. If anyone wants his autograph, I can hook you up.

There was also this guy, who had on a baaaadddd outfit.

Remember what I said about the trash in Manny......more evidence.

Then on the way home, I saw some dude in a really bad outfit. Yikes.

Blast-er from the Past-er

I know the comments section is working sporadically, but if you can guess who this is, I`ll give you a hearty handshake.

Broadbottom Cats!

His name is Corey.

Well, it has been a good, action-packed middle of summer. I have to get another blog done tomorrow or else it will never happen. We are off to Greece for the summer on Friday! Crap! I should start packing. OK---until tomorrow peeps!